Dog Days, Glen Miller Nights — Laurie Graham

"They like it if you're marvellous for your age. If you can't be that, they want you down Plaistow Crematorium, not hanging about here, taking up bus seats." In an East End high-rise, Birdie Gibbs lives on chocolate and yearns for action, or at least for the reopening of the old Imperial dance hall. One of her ex-husbands, Jimmy Dwyer, turns up from nowhere with a greyhound that needs a home, then disappears again. Seeing Jimmy revives memories of the War, when Birdie did her bit. She still does her bit today, though the world around her doesn't make much sense. When the Fruit Bowl Estate boils over in the summer of 1995 and police leave is cancelled, Birdie gets all the action she can handle. More even than the night Hitler bombed Beckton gas works. "Admirers of Alan Bennett will enjoy Graham's comic tricks." THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT